Report of the Methods Working Group (MGWG)

The 2018 meeting of the Methods Working Group (MGWG), held in Ispra, Italy, 10–14 September, was chaired by Arni Magnusson, ICES Secretariat, and attended by 22 participants. The objective of the meeting was to continue work on the ongoing projects, under the following working titles:

1 ) State-space vs. traditional stock assessment models;

2 ) Estimating stock-recruitment curves inside vs. outside an assessment model;

3 ) Appropriate level of stock assessment model complexity;

4 ) Evaluating the consequences of alternative age selection in cod fisheries.

The four projects are organized on the group GitHub site (https://github.com/iceseg/mgwg). Each project homepage is currently listing: two team coordinators, participants, project plan, task table, literature links, and a schedule of monthly web meetings. New working group members joined the existing teams, brought with them fresh ideas and skills, and are now engaged in specific tasks of a project of their choice.

The projects vary in terms of team size, the nature of the work involved, and the tangible progress so far. All projects have in common that they are on the frontier of current stock assessment research, and all efforts by the group are oriented to fit in the format of multiauthored journal papers.

Overall, the objectives of the meeting were achieved, and the working group participants are enthusiastically continuing the collaborative research. To maintain pace and coordinate the work between the annual meetings, the working group has scheduled monthly project web meetings and quarterly group-wide web meetings.